The Driver **** (1978, Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani) – Classic Movie Review 7,048

Walter Hill’s beautifully crafted, dazzlingly stylised 1978 film noir crime action thriller The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal at his melancholic brooding best as the sharpest getaway man in the robbery business.

Writer-director Walter Hill’s second movie as director (after Hard Times) is the beautifully crafted, dazzlingly stylised 1978 film noir crime action thriller The Driver, with Ryan O’Neal at his melancholic brooding best as The Driver, the sharpest getaway man in the robbery business, Bruce Dern as The Detective, the police force’s most assiduous cop, and Isabelle Adjani as The Player, a beautiful ace gambler.

When The Detective targets The Driver, enlisting a gang to help convict him in a set-up robbery, The Driver seeks help from The Player to mislead The Detective. Game on.

The movie is atmospheric, bleak, spare and haunting – and above all thrilling as cars hurtle round Los Angeles in intensely staged chase sequences. It looks uber stylish as designer Harry Horner and cinematographer Philip Lathrop give it the moody appearance of a series of neon-lit paintings by Edward Hopper.

All the characters have titles rather than actual names, adding to the film’s existential, though some might (wrongly) say arty and pretentious, air. The Driver speaks only 350 words in all.

Despite its brilliance, it was not especially a hit, though it probably went into profit. Costing $4 million, it earned back $4,900,000 in the US, but it was then and is now a huge cult favourite among the conoscenti.

Also in the cast are Ronee Blakley as The Connection, Matt Clark as Red Plainclothesman, Felice Orlandi as Gold Plainclothesman, Joseph Walsh as Glasses, Rudy Ramos as Teeth, Denny Macko as Exchange Man, Frank Bruno as The Kid, Will Walker as Fingers, Sandy Brown Wyeth as Split, Tara King as Frizzy, Richard Carey as Floorman, Fidel Corona as Card Player, Victor Gilmour, Nick Dimitri, Bob Minor and Allen Graf.

The Driver is directed by Walter Hill, runs 91 minutes or 131 minutes, is made by EMI Films, and Twentieth Century Fox, is released by Twentieth Century Fox (1978) (US) and EMI Film Distributors (1978) (UK), is written by Walter Hill, is shot by Philip Lathrop, is produced by Lawrence Gordon, is scored by Michael Small and is designed by Harry Horner.

The director’s cut runs another 40 minutes, at 131 minutes, with some extra character insights but mostly many more car chases. The BBFC originally cut the film in the UK by 18 seconds to remove the scene where Ronee Blakley has a gun forced into her mouth. A TV version includes a useful pre-credits prologue, in which Dern and Clark first meet, and Blakley gives Adjani her assignment as an alibi. The cinema and home video version begins abruptly with the opening credits. Cheryl Smith’s role is cut from the short version.

Hill was assistant director on Bullitt (1968) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and wrote The Getaway (1972), and wrote The Driver for Steve McQueen, but he turned it down. Hill recalled: ‘He didn’t want to do anything that had to do with cars at that time. He felt he had already done that and it was pretty hard to argue with that.’

It was the first Hollywood role for Isabelle Adjani, but she felt the film hurt her career: ‘Afterwards the only American offers I got were bad ones.’

Ryan O’Neal (April 20, 1941 – December 8, 2023) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for the 1970 romantic drama film Love Story. He also found acclaim in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), which earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,048

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